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Blue Stokes Aster

admin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:53:48 +0000

Grow the beloved Stokes’ Aster from seed for a fraction of the price you’d pay for plants!

We’ve waited a long time to be able to offer the lovely Stokes’ Aster from seed!

This bright blue flower with elegantly rayed petals is long-lasting in the garden or vase, and a great source of late summer to fall color for the sunny perennial garden. One of the best native plants, it’s a “must-have” for the garden. Now you can grow it at a fraction of what you’d pay for plants!These blooms reach 3 to 4 inches across on sturdy stems just made for cutting. You’ll want to grow a few extra plants just for use in indoor arrangements! But if you do leave blooms on the plant (and who can resist, when they look so splendid in the midsummer-to-fall garden), be sure to deadhead them. That will bring new blooms even faster!Stokes’ Aster reaches 2 feet tall and about 18 inches wide, thriving in normal to sandy soils. It doesn’t like heavy, wet, or clay-ey soils, but is otherwise carefree and easy to grow.

Native to the southeastern United States, it is a superb performer in the arid southwest and far west as well as just about everywhere else gardeners need a little true-blue color.

Space plants 15 to 18 inches apart.

Pkt is 10 seeds.

Aster ‘Monch’

admin — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Rated one of the top perennials of all time for color, flower power, and easy care. If you ever see a more attractive, longer-blooming Aster than Monch, buy it at once! Garden experts agree that it is one of the all-time great performers, sending up gorgeous flowers over an astoundingly long season. And such flowers, Perfect blue daisies, 1 1/2 inches across and packed with skinny petals around a handsome chartreuse eye, they complement all the pinks, reds, and whites of the garden, and last a long time on the plant or in the vase.

Beginning in midsummer and continuing until hard frost, this modest little 2-foot plant is dotted with cheerful blooms. Asking only full sun and well-drained soil, it needs no special treatment, though if you pinch it back in the spring and once more about a month later, you’ll get even more flowers. Like all hardy Asters, Monch is long-lived and essentially trouble-free — the only difference being its bloom season, which is almost TWICE that of its cousins Blue flowers are always welcome in the garden and in arrangements, and there is no easier nor more plentiful source than Monch. I firmly believe that this plant belongs in any garden with 2 feet of sunshine to spare.

And once you begin enjoying the blooms, you’ll agree.Space the plants 15 to 18 inches apart. To keep the flowering super-profuse, divide the plants every 3 to 4 years.

Zones 5-9.

Aster ‘Wonder of Staffa’

admin — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Nonstop Lavender-Blue Blooms for Months one of the finest plants introduced in the past 50 years. Blooms from early summer till frost. You will wonder how you ever got along without this long-blooming, easy-care plant. Blue flowers are always welcome in the garden and this Aster will give you more radiant lavender-blue than you ever though possible.From early summer till fall frost, these many-branched plants bear masses of 2-inch blooms, each boasting a dense circlet of narrow petals surrounding a cheery greenish-yellow center. Superb for cutting, they are also unbelievably colorful in a mass garden display.

The plants reach just 18 to 20 inches high, so you need never worry about staking them. And if you want even more blooms, pinch the branches back in spring and again a month later. Long-lived and trouble-free, this perennial asks only full sun to part shade in ordinary, reasonable well-drained soil. Attracts butterflies too.

Zones 5-9.